Eiler, Donald

ORAL HISTORY OF DONALD EILER
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
January 31, 2018
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is January the 31st, 2018. I'm Don Hunnicutt with Don Eiler in his home, 7504 Glastonbury, Glastonbury Road, that's G-L-A-S-T-O-N-B-U-R-Y Road, Knoxville, Tennessee ... to take his oral history about living in Oak Ridge back in the early days. Don, state your full name, place of birth and date please.
MR. EILER: Okay. Donald Joseph Eiler. Born July 20, 1943 in Sylacauga, Alabama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Spell your last name please.
MR. EILER: E-I-L-E-R.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me your father's name, place of birth and date if you recall.
MR. EILER: Joseph David Eiler, in Louisville, Kentucky, and April 19, 1913.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your mother's maiden name, place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Anna Mae Johnson, and she was born May 24, 1914, in, well, Edmonson County, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Kentucky.
MR. EILER: Kentucky. But, they really didn't know. It could have Edmonson County, it could have been Butler County.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, on your father's side, your grandfather's name and place of birth if you recall.
MR. EILER: That was Joseph Eiler also, and also in Louisville, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your grandmother's maiden name and place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Mary Boyd, and ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: B-O-Y-D?
MR. EILER: B-O-Y-D. I'm sure she ... Well, I'm sure she was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but I can't state that for a fact.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay. Now, let's switch over to your mother's side of the family. Give me your grandfather's name and place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Cedric Johnson, and born in 1871 in Butler County, Kentucky. There seems to be more certainty about that than about Mom's birthplace. And, Grandmother was Ashrula Ray, and she was born in 1877, also in Butler County, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that R-H-E-A or R-A-Y?
MR. EILER: R-A-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: R-A-Y.
MR. EILER: R-A-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me a little bit of what you know about your father's school history.
MR. EILER: I think he went to the 10th grade, and would that have been during the Depression? But yeah, I think he quit and went to work after the 10th grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seems to be the trend back in those days.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom?
MR. EILER: I really don't remember how much schooling she had. Maybe, the eighth grade. But I know, I remember her saying that at 14, she moved to Louisville and started working in a box factory in Louisville, 14-years-old. Of course, her father died young, and I really don't have any information on what happened, you know, how they got along from the time he died until she went to Louisville. She was probably with some of her siblings when she moved to Louisville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how your mother and father met?
MR. EILER: Do not know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. EILER: I've got three brothers and one sister.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they're names are?
MR. EILER: Fred Eiler, lives here in Karns. Joyce, Joyce Whiteside lives in Farragut, and Ron, the youngest, lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Well, no he doesn't. He's residing in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time, he's a resident of Farragut.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that's just two brothers. You said three, you got one more head out there somewhere?
MR. EILER: Did I count wrong?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You told me you had three brothers and one sister. I've got one sister and two brothers, are you counting yourself as-
MR. EILER: I must be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay. That's all right. You're a brother to them, aren't you?
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their places of birth and dates by any chance?
MR. EILER: They all three were born in Oak Ridge, and Fred in 1945. Joyce, Joy as she goes by now, in 1948, and Ron in 1956.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live before you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: Sylacauga, Alabama. We came to Oak Ridge, Don, when I was three-months-old. Dad came up here before I was born, or after I was born. I don’t know his company's service date. He hired in at for ORNL [Oak Ridge National Laboratory], at X-10, in July of 1943. I've been thinking to try to find out, see if I can find out what his company's service date was, but haven't took it upon myself. But Mom and I stayed in Sylacauga, and her sister-in-law, who I don't think was actually her sister-in-law yet then, came from Louisville to Sylacauga and stayed with her until we were able to, until they had a house ready for us here in Oak Ridge, and we moved to Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did your dad do when he came?
MR. EILER: He was a machinist at the Lab. He started an apprenticeship with L&N [Railroad] there in Louisville, and I don't know, he may have gone to work for the railroad right after he quit his high school studies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall him telling you how he knew about work in Oak Ridge by any means?
MR. EILER: No, no, I don't.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what was the first house the family lived in?
MR. EILER: 151 North Alabama Road.
MR. HUNNICUTT: 151?
MR. EILER: Yeah, little G house. I can still remember that coal stove in the living room.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what the inside of the G house looked like.
MR. EILER: Well, we had the oak floors, which at that time were cold, but now, of course, they would be real first-class flooring. You could come in the front door, you were in the little living room, and there's kind of a little dinette area between that and the kitchen at the back right part of the house. Of course, the coal bin back behind the kitchen, and then on the left there was a little-bitty hall. If you went left again, you were in the front bedroom. If you went to the right a little bit, you were in the back bedroom, and if you went all the way back down that hall, you were in the little bathroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, this is a two bedroom house?
MR. EILER: Two bedrooms, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned the stove, and it was a coal-fired furnace?
MR. EILER: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a furnace, it was a stove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Now, some of those, the G and H houses, the H's were three bedrooms about the same size. They looked sort of like a cemesto, they were a cemesto.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm interested to know, some did not have a fireplace or a chimney that went up top, did this one?
MR. EILER: No. No, the G's did not have a fireplace. Just had the stove, and I guess, some kind of…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Flue.
MR. EILER: A flue arrangement that went out in front.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the utility room, was there any ... a couple, a one, two sinks, a true sink for washing, like made out of concrete that set up on a stand, do you recall?
MR. EILER: Don, I can't-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, some of the cemestos had them.
MR. EILER: I can't remember having one. We had the little kitchen there, and then there was just a little space there and then the coal bin. I don't believe it had a utility sink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a wall and a door that separated the coal bin from the small kitchen?
MR. EILER: No. No, I don't think-
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's just all open space.
MR. EILER: I think it was all open space. Of course, the back door was there between the kitchen and the coal bin, so to speak.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the coal came through the door in the back side of the house?
MR. EILER: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, sure did. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You're the first person I've interviewed that lived in an actual G house, so that's why I'm quizzing you so much.
MR. EILER: Is that right?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. They didn't build many of them.
MR. EILER: Sure not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And very few H's as well, and they were all out there in the area you were referring to. Alabama, in that area.
MR. EILER: Yeah, the East Village area, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work any when she first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: No. No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the first school and where was it that you attended?
MR. EILER: Glenwood, and kindergarten, and that had to have been what? Around 1950 or 1951. Well, shoot. I was born in '43, and that would have been '48, '49. But yeah, it was Glenwood, and the first grade was on the, or the kindergarten, was on the west end of the building. I can remember being scared to death when I first went in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far was the school from your house?
MR. EILER: Whew, it's a couple miles I guess. It's a pretty good little distance.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, did your mother take you to school the first day or do you remember?
MR. EILER: I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why was you scared? Was it just the atmosphere?
MR. EILER: Just being away from the home, being away from her, and yeah, all those kids and the teachers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend the morning session or the evening session of kindergarten?
MR. EILER: I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was so many kids in those days, they had two sessions.
MR. EILER: Two sessions, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. You remember your teacher's name?
MR. EILER: Lord, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the other grades? How many grades did you attend at Glenwood?
MR. EILER: Well, I'm a little bit confused. I think I went into first grade there, but somewhere along the line I ended up at St. Mary's [Catholic School], and I'm sure that I was in St. Mary's in the second grade, but I don't know whether maybe at the middle winter break or something, we moved from Glenwood to St. Mary's. I don't know. I don't remember the transition.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you didn't have to live in any kind of school district to go to St. Mary's. That was a private school.
MR. EILER: Right, yeah. Private school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you could live anywhere in the city.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You think it's probably the second grade you attended St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: Yeah. I'm sure that the second grade, I was at St. Mary's.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you get to school, do you recall?
MR. EILER: The buses. We rode the buses. We rode up to Jackson Square, and I don't know, I'm kind of thinking we maybe transferred buses there, and then somehow got on to around Vermont Avenue, you know, or maybe down the Turnpike. I don't really remember, on over to St. Mary's.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember having to pay to ride the bus?
MR. EILER: Yeah. A dime, and we could get tickets too. I can remember, vaguely remember the tickets.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Bus tickets?
MR. EILER: Bus tickets, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know what bus to get on when you ... Obviously, in the morning, you probably went out on the side of the street and waited on the bus at a certain place.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I don't remember whether we walked down to Arkansas Avenue. Gosh, I remember the bus numbers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But that's how you knew what bus to get on, the number of the bus. Wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's the first you had to remember so you can get there and back home.
MR. EILER: Yeah. And then, well, later on when we moved ... We'll get to that, I guess, here in a minute, but yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about riding the buses? I'm sure there's a lot of kids on there, but-
MR. EILER: There were, but that's really about all I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When it came time for you to come home from school, and it got close to your house, how'd you know where to get off the bus, and how did the bus driver know where to let you off?
MR. EILER: It seems like we had the bell, the cord, and you would pull on the cord, and I guess, probably after a while, why the drivers pretty well knew who was going where.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It seemed to be that way. He'd know the kids and where they'd stop.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Well, another aspect of that we can talk about maybe a little later, the local transit service.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your second grade teacher at St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember any of your teachers at St. Mary's? How many years did you go through St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: I graduated eighth grade, yeah, graduated eighth grade. Sister Jane Dominic, and I don't know whether she was the principal-
MR. HUNNICUTT: She was.
MR. EILER: Was she? That's the only one I can remember. I can remember the faces of some of the others, but I don't remember any names, but Sister Jane would leave a lasting impression on you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of those nun teachers, I understand it would.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you feel like you got a good education going through St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: Very good. Very good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Prepared you for high school or junior high, I guess it was.
MR. EILER: Well, there's where the next story starts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MR. EILER: I went to Knoxville Catholic High School for the ninth and tenth grades, and I don't really know how I made that decision, but there again, we were riding the bus. We would, by that time, I'd walk from ... We had moved to Pennsylvania Avenue. I walked from there down to the Central Terminal, get on the local transit bus, ride it into Knoxville to Gay Street, and either get on the Knoxville bus there and ride it on out to Catholic High on Magnolia Avenue or I'd walk from Gay Street out to Magnolia Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That wasn't too far out through there.
MR. EILER: Again, couple miles probably, and but did that for two years. Got a ride some of the time. Howard Gerth, by that time, I had met Howard earlier, but he was going to UT [University of Tennessee], and he would give us a ride. Probably, he'd drop us off there at Downtown, and then we'd catch the Knoxville bus out to school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I would say that your parents decided that would be the best place for you to go to high school.
MR. EILER: Well, that could be too. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, do you feel like you got a good education through the school?
MR. EILER: Yeah, all the way. The two years at Catholic High, and then the two years at Oak Ridge High. Real good, real good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the house number on Pennsylvania Avenue?
MR. EILER: Well, we were actually 109 Packer Road, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house was that?
MR. EILER: That was a C. We had three bedrooms there. We moved ... Mom was pregnant with Ron at the time, so we had ... How does this add up? One, two, three, four. Me, two brothers, and a sister, so we were going to have four kids there in that little G house, so that was getting pretty crowded, so we moved into the three bedrooms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me your sleeping arrangements in the G house? Who slept where?
MR. EILER: Fred and I were in the, I guess it was smaller, the back bedroom. And I guess, Joyce was in with Mom and Dad, and ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: And when you moved to the C house, how did the sleeping arrangement go there?
MR. EILER: Pretty much the same. Well, what ... Where did Ron end up? I think Joyce ended up in the little bedroom by herself, and Fred and I were in the middle-sized bedroom, and then Mom and Dad and, I guess, Joyce was, or Ron was back there, infant, you know, with them in the biggest back corner bedroom. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the summertime, what did you do for fun and entertainment when you were going to elementary school days?
MR. EILER: Don, well, in two different worlds, the East Village, and then over there around Pine Valley and New York Avenue and Pennsylvania. But in East Village we had those greenbelts. We had the greenbelt that ran up behind North Alabama and Alhambra Road and back up through there, and then we had another greenbelt that ran off of that one across, if you will, California Avenue, and then ran on up towards Delaware. We would roam and play in those greenbelts from daylight to dark. And not just the summertime, we would play back in there year-round. Just roam and play, and vine swings, you know, the grape vines.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it was pretty wild country, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: To us, it was the Hundred Acre Woods. It was a big, big area. I look at a map now, or I haven't really tried to go up there and wander around, but it seems like the area is not nearly as big as I had imagined it was then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MR. EILER: But, they came in there, I don't know, late ‘40’s and tore down those flattops and built the houses that are there now on Alhambra, and up in that area. Of course, we'd watch the construction work up there. There was what we called the Red Dirt Hill, there off of Alhambra, and I guess, it was actually a cedar barren, and we would play on that and get up there after it rained and that clay mud would be the biggest mess you ever saw. But ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there any boardwalks out in that area during that time?
MR. EILER: Well, we had the original boardwalks, yeah. Well, I can vaguely remember them coming around tearing up the boardwalks. What I really remember is the work crews. They had metal forms that they used. The curbs were concrete. The sidewalks were asphalt and, of course, the streets were asphalt, but we had those concrete curbs. They had metal forms that they would put in place and pour the curbs, and then, of course, let them cure and then take the forms up and keep moving on down the street there pouring those. But yeah, I remember those wooden boardwalks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's a shame they took those things up, because everybody I ever talk to enjoyed them. They were shortcuts from one street to another, easy accessible.
MR. EILER: Well, they hadn't ... I don't know what you call them. The pass, yeah. There was one from North Alabama up to California Avenue, about three houses up from us. It ran up through there, a shortcut you might call it. But it was gravel, it wasn't a boardwalk as I remember it, it was a gravel. Then when we moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, there was another one. Packer Road looped around to Pacific, and where the two streets met, I guess there at the top of that loop, there was one of those shortcut-type things that went up towards Pine Valley Shopping Center. I forget what the name of that road is, West Newkirk maybe. But yeah, those were all over town, and they were real handy to get around on foot to different parts of town. Well, going back to what were talking about, going to Glenwood. We used two or three of those along the way from North Alabama over there to the Glenwood Elementary School. But yeah, those were nice. Some good thinking on the part of the engineers that laid out that town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you ever kind of just sat back and look at how Oak Ridge is laid out and think about the difficulty they had building those houses on all that hilly terrain?
MR. EILER: Well, yeah. In the mud, and oh yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know, when you get from Tennessee Avenue and you start going up all of these northern streets, it's nothing but hills up through there.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All the way across the whole city spanned.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Sure does.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It just amazes me how they got equipment up through there to do all that.
MR. EILER: Yeah. But, they put them up and they stayed up too, you know it. Here we are, what, 75 years later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about Pine Valley Shopping Center, what do you remember about it?
MR. EILER: Oh, The Laughing Monkey, the toy shop, and Jane Bridges, Doris Matthews. I worked some. Jane had some model airplanes, and of course, being a model airplane enthusiast, why I ended up handling that part of the store for her. There was a grocery store there, a barber shop. Aw, shoot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Beauty shop?
MR. EILER: May have been before The Laughing Monkey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, The Laughing-
MR. EILER: Well, then of course the drug store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Laughing Monkey was in where the Fire Department used to be. Each one of those stores had a fire ... One engine and three or four men.
MR. EILER: Well, I remember that from East Village. I don't remember it from-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they had moved out and she moved in there.
MR. EILER: Yeah, I'm trying to remember the barber shop. Breeding. Breeding.
MR. HUNNICUTT: His son cuts hair now on East Division Road, at that barbershop.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah Jim. Yeah, the Arcade Barbershop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, it was Downtown, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: They left Pine Valley and opened up in Downtown there. The Arcade Barbershop. That was Jim's dad. I know, he cut my hair many a time. I can't remember too much about the drug store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The drug store, Mr. Bass was the pharmacist.
MR. EILER: I don't remember that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the City Market was the-
MR. EILER: City Market.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think it was City Market. I get that one and the one at Elm Grove mixed up, but anyway, it's-
MR. EILER: I bet that Elm Grove was the City Market.
MR. HUNNICUTT: City Market.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, I can't remember what the market was. I moved up there on Norwood Lane years and years later, but visited that shop and it was such a neat place to visit.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very busy.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very busy.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Those grocery stores had good meat. You could get meat, good meat in those little grocery stores.
MR. EILER: But-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go to the Pine Valley playground during the summer, and-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I can tell tales there. The one I've got to relate. The model airplanes. You know, they had a ball field out there behind the school building, and they had some organized activities out of the gym, and I guess it was the Oak Ridge Recreation Department there but I never got involved with that, but we got into model airplanes. The most amazing thing of it was the control line models, of course, around, around, around, around, but those engines had no mufflers. The things were loud. Again, we would get out there with them as long as we could buy fuel for those engines. Why, we would fly those model airplanes from dawn to dark. Those people that lived up there on those streets above the Pine Valley playground, you know? They had to be the most tolerant people in the world. The noise that we generated with those things, and we did it from junior high on up through high school. Maybe like five years we were up there, but nobody ever complained.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of engine did they use?
MR. EILER: They were internal combustion, glow plug. They were small engines, but they were quite powerful. You know, we'd fly those airplanes 80, 90 miles an hour on those control lines, believe it or not. And, you know, they were just incredibly loud. I'm still into the model airplanes today, but of course we've got mufflers and all that, and even with the mufflers the things are loud. If I take the muffler off of one of them and run it for whatever reason, I realize how loud those things were. Incredible.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the fuel consistency made out of?
MR. EILER: Methanol alcohol and castor oil, and we would, at times, actually make the fuel, mix the fuel ourselves. We would buy a gallon of methanol alcohol. The drugstores would buy it for us, and of course they had castor oil, so we would try to get a degummed castor oil that was a better lubricant, but yeah. Or you know, high-cotton when we had a little bit of money and we could buy commercial fuel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were the planes made out of?
MR. EILER: They were the balsa wood and plywood. Yeah, with the either silk covering or what they call silkspan, which is actually a paper. Then we had paint. Dope they call it that we actually covered or painted the paper or the silk with to seal and make a smooth finish on the wings.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember using the paper across, gluing it on, and then wetting the paper, and then when it dried-
MR. EILER: It'd shrink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It'd shrink and make it real tight.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Even the dope, the Butyrate dope paint would also cause it to shrink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That stuff was pretty potent wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, I can tell some tales of that too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I used to get headaches smelling that stuff.
MR. EILER: Not realizing what I was doing, you know, that we didn't have adequate ventilation too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were the control lines made out of?
MR. EILER: They were steel. They were braided steel cable. Very thin ... Well, we had some that were actually solid steel wire, and then the more flexible ones were with the stranded, stranded cable.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how you go about flying a model airplane. Does it take two people to do it?
MR. EILER: Oh yeah. Yeah. We didn't have any throttles or anything. When we start the engine, why the engine was running full power and somebody was holding it. Well, even to start it, one person to hold the plane and one person flipping the prop to start the engine, and then typically it was the pilot that was doing the engine starting. Then when we got the engine started and got it adjusted, why he would run out to the center of the circle that we were going to fly around and signal the person holding the plane to let go of it, and away we go. Fly it until the fuel runs out and the engine quits and then land it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know the little needle out on the side of the motor?
MR. EILER: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, that controlled how fast that motor would run, wouldn't it? The mixture of fuel going into it.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Of course there's only one way you'd go-
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's why [crosstalk]-
MR. EILER: As fast as it would go.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your props made out of wood or plastic?
MR. EILER: We used both. They came out with the nylon propellers, and really probably the wood were a better, more efficient propellers, but of course, the nylons were more tolerable of rough landings.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Crash landings.
MR. EILER: Yeah, they didn't break quite as often as the-
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about when you was trying to start one, you know, you would get it around there and you flip it and sometimes it would kick back on you-
MR. EILER: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And kind of work on your finger a little bit.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever use one of those covers that you put over your finger. It seems like I saw those.
MR. EILER: Gloves. Gloves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Gloves.
MR. EILER: We used a heavy leather glove. And we would use a chicken stick too. Either a piece of nylon or something, instead of using a finger for it. But yeah, we learned real quick that those heavy leather gloves were a good thing. Some of the engines that we were using, too, were quite high-performance engines, powerful, and they were mean about getting the things started. They would kick back like you talk about. Oh, they would chew up a finger.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When I tell you about an old 49 engine, what's that mean?
MR. EILER: That's the little-bitty one. Yeah, the Bumblebee? Baby bee. Baby bee they called it, 049 engine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They were made by who?
MR. EILER: Thimble Drome. Thimble Drome. They were a lot of fun. They were very cantankerous, cantankerous, finicky. The fuel, our home-brew fuel, they wouldn't run very well with that at all. We had to have the good commercial fuel for them to run well, but they were still sensitive in dirt. Of course, we were flying up there in Pine Valley on that ball field, that dirt field, and we would have dirt everywhere. Well, and even if we flew in the grass, we would have grass debris or grass seeds or whatever. So it was a continuous effort to keep the engines clean and keep them running.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you overcome your dizziness?
MR. EILER: Got used to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, before you got used to it, did you crash the plane?
MR. EILER: We even practiced spinning around in circles to acclimate ourselves to it, and we didn't really have any trouble.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did it take you to be able to not be dizzy?
MR. EILER: It didn't take much, just a few flights really. Never was a problem.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how do you control a model airplane to fly?
MR. EILER: Well, the U control, the control lines would ... We had a handle about, oh, four inches long, a nice fit in the hand, and the two control line wires were attached to that handle. You would move the handle up and down or front and back, and the motion would be transferred through a mechanism to the elevator on the tail on the plane which would make the airplane go up and down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was the tail affixed at a certain angle so it would make a circle or was it just straight back?
MR. EILER: No, no. It was straight. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you're talking ... The elevator's located on the back wing of the tail.
MR. EILER: Yeah, the horizontal wing at the back of the airplane.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, those cables inside the body of the plane, what were they made out of?
MR. EILER: They were typically, not real thick, but they were hard wire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Solid wire.
MR. EILER: Solid wire, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did that go to a bell crank and then-
MR. EILER: Bell crank, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And move the-
MR. EILER: Yep. The control lines go to the bell crank and then the bell crank pushes the push rod, the solid metal wire, which was attached to the elevator at the back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When the two lines came out of the wing of the plane, when you built that you had to make sure that probably the front one was for up and down and the back was ...
MR. EILER: Well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you worked up and down this way, or how did-
MR. EILER: Yeah, well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that the way it was hooked up?
MR. EILER: Yeah, it was. Now of course, when you finished flying for the day, you would have a reel, cardboard reel or whatever plastic, and you would wind the wires up. We typically flew 50 or 60 foot radius circles. Fifty foot long lines, the wires, so you had to wind them up to take care of them, store them. But when you came back out the next time to fly, you attached the lines, the control lines to the wing of the airplane, you connected them to the handle, and you made sure that you had the up end of that handle connected to the up end of the wire coming out of that airplane wing. If you didn't it was bad news.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Go down instead of up.
MR. EILER: Yep.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how did the wires attach to the airplane connections?
MR. EILER: Then we had little specialized clips that were made for that purpose.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a pretty good tug on that arm with that plane flying around.
MR. EILER: Not bad, but yeah, you like to have a pretty good tug to make sure that the wing stays and the plane stays out there on the end of those lines. If the lines get slack, of course you have no control of the airplane.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a certain distance of the lines that you flew out or could you have flown at a smaller diameter of circle?
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What's the advantage of flying at a larger diameter versus a small one?
MR. EILER: You're not turning around as fast, but there were ... there were protocols, protocols for different sizes of engines, they're different for the size of airplanes. The little 049 airplanes that you mentioned, they're small of course, and we actually used thread lines for them, typically.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like fishing line?
MR. EILER: Like fishing line. And, we typically flew about 25 foot radius, 25 foot line length with those smaller airplanes, but you didn't want the lines to get slack.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was your flying partner?
MR. EILER: Tony Wylie. Tony was my next door neighbor on Packer Road, and oh, Randy Peters. Randy Peters lived down on the corner of Packer Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh, there were others I'm sure, but they come to mind right off. John Peed. John Peed. He lived on ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: East Newkirk now.
MR. EILER: East Newkirk, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, I know John.
MR. EILER: Yes, John and some of the Smiths flew a little bit with us too. I don't remember any first names. They lived on Newkirk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other jobs did you have growing up in Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: Paper routes. I had the Chattanooga Times, believe it or not, over around the North Alabama area, and then the Knoxville Journal there around Pennsylvania.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many customers did you have, do you remember?
MR. EILER: Whew, I think about 100, 100. I actually had three routes with the Journal. I think I had about 60 on each of the residential routes, but I had the Oak Ridge Hospital, and I'd wander through there in the morning and try to pedal a few papers actually at the rooms, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about what you remember about how the hospital looked in those days.
MR. EILER: That was the new, that was the new-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Methodist Hospital.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you didn't deliver in the old hospital.
MR. EILER: No, no, no. It was the new one. Trying to remember if it was three floors, four floors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite smaller than it is today, yeah.
MR. EILER: Well, I'm not even that familiar with ... Well, yeah today with the wings that go out the south side towards the…
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember the entry was facing Tennessee Avenue.
MR. EILER: Tennessee Avenue, sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The back side.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had an open house one time. It seemed like to me it was in 1960 maybe or somewhere in there, whenever they first built the hospital. The public went through and toured the hospital.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Big at that time compared to the old one.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember the old one that much. I can remember a ward kind of built into the land, the hill there, I just don't remember much at all about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they did have wards where they had four beds in there at one time, you know, in some of those. Because it wasn't very big, but ... How much was papers in those days?
MR. EILER: Shoot, I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much you'd make a week?
MR. EILER: No, but it financed my model airplanes. It financed my Ham radio. It was-
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you get into Ham radioing?
MR. EILER: I'm guessing about 1955, ‘56. Yeah, but I was interested in radio from day one. I'll declare. The crystal kit set, when we were still in North Alabama. Strung an antenna out through the backyard into one of the trees back there, and then I got a little one tube radio that I assembled, and Mom and Dad bought me a radio, and it was before we left North Alabama. Nice Zenith little radio, and you could operate it off of plugging into the wall or it had a set of batteries that it would operate off of it. Batteries weren't too practical, of course, running them down, they were expensive. But, I've still got that radio, believe it or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a shortwave radio?
MR. EILER: No, it was just AM [amplitude modulated].
MR. HUNNICUTT: AM?
MR. EILER: AM, yeah. An AM radio, but ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get involved in Ham radio?
MR. EILER: Somehow found out. I'm sure it was the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club had license classes, and what was at the Red Cross building there on the Turnpike. I don't know how I found out about them, but took those classes. They, of course, taught you the code as well as the theory aspects of radio operation. I'm sure that's where I met Howard Gerth, and don't remember well. Randy Peters ended up getting a Ham radio, amateur radio license also. We were big in the amateur radio there while we were in high school, but a lot of fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What class of Ham radio did you achieve?
MR. EILER: Well, I got the novice to start with, that was the beginner, basic theory exam and five words per minute code proficiency, and that license was good for one year. Well, I ran into a bit of a pickle. To the next step up in the licenses was the general class license, 13 words per minute code and a bit more theory as far as examination was concerned, but you had to go to Knoxville to the old post office building there on Main Avenue to take the exam. The Federal Communications Commission only came to Knoxville every three months, once a quarter. Well, I got into a situation where my novice exam was about to expire and like about the same time, they came to Knoxville for the exam, so I had to pass the exam right then or else for the next three months I wasn't going to be licensed to go on the air, but passed, passed, and continued on. But then, when I got in college, I regret it to this day, but I let my license expire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of radio did you have when you-
MR. EILER: Heathkit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MR. EILER: Heathkit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a wire antenna strung out?
MR. EILER: Yeah. That was there on Packer Road. I built a pretty decent little mast out of 2x4s. I think I used 12 foot 2x4s, and I think I ended up with like close to a 24 foot mast. We didn't have any trees that were usable there in the yard there at that house, so I put that mast up at the back end of the yard there and then attached the other end of the antenna to the chimney, and talked to the world.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know how long to make the wire for your antenna?
MR. EILER: Oh, you learn all that so that you can pass the exam-
MR. HUNNICUTT: For the theory?
MR. EILER: For your ... yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the wire was made out of?
MR. EILER: That particular antenna was what they called folded dipole. Back in the day, we had TV lead-in, which was a flat two conductor cable if you will, and the antenna was made out of that. Sixty-six feet long, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you had to attach the co-ax, the lead-in to the radio someplace in the length of that antenna didn't you?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Midpoint. This was a balanced antenna.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At each end of that antenna, it had to be insulated to something I guess within that-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So it wouldn't go to ground?
MR. EILER: Yeah, right. Using ceramic insulators, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that antenna was for a certain frequency, I presume, on the band.
MR. EILER: Yeah, 7 megahertz.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you weren't allowed to go to any other frequency other than that for your classification.
MR. EILER: Oh, well there were several different bands that you could operate at. You were more limited with the novice license then you were with the general license. But my situation, the receiver, I paid 29 dollars for the Heathkit receiver, and it worked best at 7 megahertz, 40 meters, so everything pointed for me to operate on 7 megahertz.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When I say it works CW, what does that mean?
MR. EILER: Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what does CW actually stand for, do you even know?
MR. EILER: Continuous wave. Yeah, yeah. You're actually emitting a continuous signal that is interrupted, of course, as you open and close the key, the telegraph key to send the Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you enjoy working CW?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I much preferred CW. I managed to build a modulator. Again, I had a Heathkit transmitter, and I think I paid about 30 dollars, of course, its 1960 or 1955 actually, when 30 dollars was a pretty good chunk of change. But then I built a modulator, which allowed me to use phone communications, but I much preferred the CW, the Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Are you still involved in HAM radio today?
MR. EILER: To a limited extent, yeah. Yeah. I've got an operating station.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What's it mean by “meeting the net”?
MR. EILER: Well, that's primarily what I do these days. For emergency ... Well, traffic handling. Back in the day I guess, amateur radio was used for conveying messages. Of course, now one purpose for amateur radio is emergency communications if and when there's problems, and they'll have networks that are really dry runs to provide emergency communications, and that's “meeting in the net.” Everybody is checking in and letting the net control station know that they're there and available to handle messages or whatever has to be done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, it sounds like to me that Ham radios is kind of the forerunner of our telephones we have today, our wireless telephones. You had repeaters, I believe, back in those days that came online that would put the signal on down the country.
MR. EILER: Right. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about phone patches?
MR. EILER: Well, soldiers, military personnel overseas, and amateur radio stations typically, I guess, and many of the military bases overseas, they had amateur shortwave radio stations. The soldiers, sailors, whatever, airmen could communicate with amateur radio stations in the United States. The phone patches were an interface mechanism between the radio and the local telephone service, and the amateur radio operators could provide communications between the overseas soldiers and their families in the United States. Of course, if it was a local call on the telephone where the amateur radio station was located, it was essentially free communications for those soldiers, military personnel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a mobile unit in your vehicle?
MR. EILER: Yeah, but I didn't operate much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they kind of limited to how much range you had?
MR. EILER: Yeah, the range is limited and considerable degree of difficulty getting a viable amateur station, mobile amateur station.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is the term “skip” mean?
MR. EILER: Propagation. At the high frequencies, 10 megahertz, 20 megahertz, 30 megahertz, the radio waves can skip off of the ionosphere and that mechanism allows communications half way around the world, and skip is a good as, well, a catch-and catch-can activity. It depends on the solar activity. It depends on the time of day, and it depends on some things that I think we still don't understand to this day, in spite of the fact that radio communications have been going on for 100 years, but long-range communications by ionospheric skip.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did most of her grocery shopping?
MR. EILER: I do remember the A&P at Jackson Square. Well, yeah I guess, I really don't remember us doing much shopping at the grocery at East Village or the grocery at Pine Valley, but mostly at A&P there at Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that was the number one grocery store, I guess, for a time.
MR. EILER: Yeah, well, were there any White Stores at that time?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The White Store came in after the A&P moved out in, you know, in '55 they moved down to the new Downtown area.
MR. EILER: Right, they were up there-
MR. HUNNICUTT: The White Store came in, in its place.
MR. EILER: Oh, okay. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: White Store was good. White Store was the forerunner of Food City.
MR. EILER: Well, how about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. What else do you remember about Jackson Square?
MR. EILER: Well, football games. Blankenship Field. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about department stores in the square?
MR. EILER: Well, Loveman's. Loveman's, yeah. Yeah. They had the basement downstairs. The amateur astronomer, for my birthday, or excuse me, for graduation for eighth grade, the parents bought me a pair of 7x50 binoculars from Loveman's. I wanted just a rinky-dink, cheap, pair of binoculars, but they got me a real nice pair of binoculars. I was in seventh heaven looking at the heavens with those binoculars, and yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, are you still a stargazer today?
MR. EILER: Still a stargazer. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I still got those binoculars. They're worn out, but I still have got those binoculars.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, I think upstairs in Loveman's was clothes, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Clothes, yes. That's what I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And perfumes and things of that nature.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Downstairs, was that mainly the sporting good area, and what all do you remember down there?
MR. EILER: Really, all I remember and I don't know if it was kind of a photography section or what, but that's really all that I remember downstairs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe that they did have a place where you could have photos made. You came in that back door. You remember there was a back door that faced the back parking lot?
MR. EILER: Right, there was. Yeah, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about movie theaters? Did you go to the movies very much?
MR. EILER: Oh, yeah, yeah. The Central, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Center.
MR. EILER: Center Theater. That was there at Jackson Square, and Saturday the westerns and the Commando Cody or, anyway, there was some kind of space serial thing. Yeah. And, we loved to go to the Center Theater every Saturday.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what it costs to get in?
MR. EILER: Ah, there again it was maybe a quarter. I don't think it was much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the Oak Ridge swimming pool very much?
MR. EILER: Not a whole lot. I went to Oak Ridge to take, to this pool to take swimming lessons, and we did go to the pool some, but I was not meant to be a swimmer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the gate opening in March of '49?
MR. EILER: No, no I don't.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about in 1945 when they dropped the bomb? Do you remember anything about that?
MR. EILER: No, I would of course only been two years old. No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were out in the summer during your high school days, other than model airplaning and Ham radioing, what else did you do for fun or activities?
MR. EILER: Well, the touch football. We had our mud bowls at Pine Valley. We had a good crowd up there, and I don't remember us playing football that much in the summertime. Of course, it would have been hot, and of course, we were playing with the airplanes and what not, but in the fall and the winter, we would play football. Of course, it didn't matter how much it rained, how muddy that field was, we would play football.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Snow White Drive-In, do you remember that?
MR. EILER: Snow White was there in front of the hospital. Yeah, yeah. We would eat breakfast there, where were we going?
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were carrying newspapers, was that a central place to meet your route manager? Do you remember? If you needed him, that's where you'd go find him.
MR. EILER: Don't remember. Don't remember, yeah, but it seemed like they had a good breakfast there at the Snow White.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you live on Packer Road the whole time until you got married and-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your family lived there until-
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long did they live there?
MR. EILER: Well, they lived there on through ... I commuted mostly going to UT, and when Sandy and I got married, we got an E-1 apartment down on East Tennessee, right below the Elm Grove there, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember the number?
MR. EILER: 422, can't forget it, 422 East Tennessee. Then, we stayed there six months maybe and moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, 319 Pennsylvania Avenue. I can't remember the name of the guy that we rented that place from. That was probably an A house, a B house, I don't remember. But, anyway, ended up that we bought the C house, 109 Packer Road, from Dad, and we lived there for five years or so maybe, before we finally moved out here to Karns.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's back up. You bought it from your dad, what happened to him? Why would he sell the house to you?
MR. EILER: They moved to a smaller house. They moved up to West Malta, yeah, and didn't need that big a house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you lived in the E-1 apartment, can you tell me what that looked like inside?
MR. EILER: One bedroom, you come in the front door, had the little living room dinette area, dining area there. Then that was on the front side, if you will, the kitchen was on the back side and one little bedroom on the back side. A bathroom was between the bathroom and the kitchen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you say that E-1 apartment was located? It's on Tennessee Avenue there, East Tennessee, but past the Elm Grove Shopping Center.
MR. EILER: Yeah, if you're going east toward East Village from the Elm Grove Shopping Center, it would have been about the third E unit-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Complex downtown.
MR. EILER: Yeah, E complex on the right going down through there, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your wife?
MR. EILER: Probably at the Gerth residence. Karl and Howard Gerth's house, best I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And her name is Sandy?
MR. EILER: Sandy, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her maiden name?
MR. EILER: Laughlin. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you all go for dating?
MR. EILER: Whew, I don't know. Here and there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Movies or various things of that nature?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what year did you all get married?
MR. EILER: 1967.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was the marriage held?
MR. EILER: Kern Methodist there in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, that's across from where you used to live in that E-1 apartment-
MR. EILER: Just down East Tennessee Avenue, a little ways. Yeah. We were right at the new home there after the wedding.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You can just walk across the street just about.
MR. EILER: Almost, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of any other things that we haven't talked about, I mean, there's so much that goes on in people's lives, but what's some the other things that might come to your mind that we haven't talked about, stories or people you've met that ... What about people that's been the influence on you in your life?
MR. EILER: Oh goodness, whew.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You better say your wife.
MR. EILER: Well, yeah, of course that. That goes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me ask you, what was your first job when you got married? Where did you work?
MR. EILER: Well, I graduated from UT in December of '66. Went to work at Y-12 in January of '67, and then we got married in September of '67.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job at Y-12?
MR. EILER: Engineer, process engineer with the utilities department.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, exactly what does a process engineer do? Don't talk about anything classified.
MR. EILER: Well, no as far as the utilities activities, I worked in the utilities department for 18 years, and there was not much classified activity there. But of course, we're providing the electricity, the water, the refrigeration, the industrial gases, the helium, nitrogen, and what not. So engineering support to keep the utilities systems operating.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife work at the time?
MR. EILER: No, she was ... No, she was at Knoxville Business College for a while at that time, and didn't do any productive activities.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you involved, or you individually or your wife, involved in any clubs of any sort?
MR. EILER: Well, back in the day, the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club, when we were in high school, and really I've been active in the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club off and on over the years. I think the club is still active now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It is.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: By the way, what's your call letters?
MR. EILER: It was K4MDG, many dancing girls back in those days. And, I got relicensed in 1975 and got WA4PLD when I was relicensed then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's somebody's old call letters from way back…
MR. EILER: It is, and it's kind of odd because at that time. that call sign was not in sequence. So, whether it was deliberate or some kind of fluke, I have no idea. But when they gave me that call sign, it wasn't in the sequence that it should have been. They were way into the WB4 call signs at that time, but no matter, it works.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Am I right in saying that if an individual has a call sign for many years and they die, they hold that for a while before they reissue it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. They do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how long that is?
MR. EILER: I believe it's two years. I believe it's two years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you could have someone that possibly 25 years old that have the call letters that somebody that was 95 had and passed away then.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, when they started, they call it vanity call signs, when they started allowing people to apply for specific call signs. I thought well I'll see about getting my call sign back, K4MDG. I fiddled around and didn't do it right then, and now somebody else has that call sign.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Cold War times, do you remember anything about that? Civil defense and things of that nature?
MR. EILER: Well, I remember the, I guess they weren't really fire drills, they were civil defense drills, they would get us out in there at St. Mary's. They would get us out in the hall and hunker down in the hallways. Yeah, I don't remember much else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else we hadn't talked about you'd like to talk about?
MR. EILER: I'm talked out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I doubt that, you just think you are.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How would you describe Oak Ridge? You've lived there for quite a few years and how would you describe it? You growing up there?
MR. EILER: Well, it was ... There were all kinds of things to do, fishing. Well, we had the Clinch River, and then when they impounded Melton Hill Lake, we had the lake. The greenbelts, you know, as far as hiking and prowling around. The athletic fields, the softball. That was something. The softball there in East Village. There were dormitories. North Alabama Road, South Alabama Road more or less with Arkansas Avenue formed a circle, and Glenwood Baptist Church started, I guess, in one of those dormitories, and then they built a church later on, but there's plenty of room out there for ... They may have even had a small playground with a slide and swings there in that area, but we had a softball field. There again, the kids, all the kids around the neighborhood there, we would play softball, just have a big time. Lay down a little diamond with bases and all that. We played softball till-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it was a shopping center right there at, East Village Shopping Center.
MR. EILER: Right, right. Down at Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of stores were in that shopping center?
MR. EILER: I remember, you talked about the fire station. I remember the fire station being underneath there. It was in the basement, so to speak, and I think we had a barber shop, and we had the grocery store, and that's about all I remember. There may have been some other commercials.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever see the Dalmatian fire dog called Chief? He would hang out at that-
MR. EILER: East Village?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Actually Chief died because when the fire alarm would come in that dog would jump onto the fire truck and go with them. Well, he was up at the store nosing around, I understand, trying to find a handout and he heard the alarm and he went out there, he got in the wrong place and the truck ran over him.
MR. EILER: Oh my goodness.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. EILER: Yeah, but I believe I do remember him now that you mention it. Yeah. We would hang out a little bit there around the fire hall. The guys in there were nice to us.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I understand he would travel up to Elm Grove, and then he'd travel on up to Jackson Square up to that fire station looking for handouts.
MR. EILER: Well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, quite a story. Well, you're involved in bowling today aren't you?
MR. EILER: Bowling yeah. Bowling. We bowl, Randy Peters and I got into bowling back when we were in high school, and we bowled mostly at Jefferson. That was something else, you mentioned the theaters and the bowling alleys. We bowled at Jefferson, and I can remember the manual pin setters and the pin boys back there racking the pins and enjoyed that a whole lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember the name of the bowling center or bowling alley in those days?
MR. EILER: Yes, well I guess it was just Jefferson.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Paragon.
MR. EILER: Paragon. You're right. You're right. It was. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about skating rink? Did you visit the skating rink much?
MR. EILER: I can't skate. We would go there, of course, the Wildcat Den. We would go there. I can't dance either, but I tried once or twice to try and roller skate. I can ice skate a little bit, but I cannot roller skate.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Speaking of The Wildcat Den, there was an individual that kind of overran that, do you remember what his name was?
MR. EILER: Oh Shep, Shep Lauter.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of man was he?
MR. EILER: He was a prince. The nicest fella you could ever want to meet.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. EILER: He was, but at the same time, he would not let the kids there at the Den get rowdy. When he had to pull on the reins and calm things down, he could do it. He could control the situation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He had the respect from the kids?
MR. EILER: Oh he did, yeah, absolutely. Thought the world of him. Yeah. I don't know, it seems like we may have even had some bands. Can't remember the name of any of them, but that was fun. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything else come to mind?
MR. EILER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm sure after we get through you'll think of something.
MR. EILER: Think about, yeah, a 100 different things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I want to thank you for your time today, Don.
MR. EILER: Well, my pleasure for sure.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I appreciate letting us coming into your home and interviewing you. Thank you again.
MR. EILER: You're welcome.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF DONALD EILER
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
January 31, 2018
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is January the 31st, 2018. I'm Don Hunnicutt with Don Eiler in his home, 7504 Glastonbury, Glastonbury Road, that's G-L-A-S-T-O-N-B-U-R-Y Road, Knoxville, Tennessee ... to take his oral history about living in Oak Ridge back in the early days. Don, state your full name, place of birth and date please.
MR. EILER: Okay. Donald Joseph Eiler. Born July 20, 1943 in Sylacauga, Alabama.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Spell your last name please.
MR. EILER: E-I-L-E-R.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me your father's name, place of birth and date if you recall.
MR. EILER: Joseph David Eiler, in Louisville, Kentucky, and April 19, 1913.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your mother's maiden name, place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Anna Mae Johnson, and she was born May 24, 1914, in, well, Edmonson County, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Kentucky.
MR. EILER: Kentucky. But, they really didn't know. It could have Edmonson County, it could have been Butler County.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, on your father's side, your grandfather's name and place of birth if you recall.
MR. EILER: That was Joseph Eiler also, and also in Louisville, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your grandmother's maiden name and place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Mary Boyd, and ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: B-O-Y-D?
MR. EILER: B-O-Y-D. I'm sure she ... Well, I'm sure she was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but I can't state that for a fact.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay. Now, let's switch over to your mother's side of the family. Give me your grandfather's name and place of birth and date.
MR. EILER: Cedric Johnson, and born in 1871 in Butler County, Kentucky. There seems to be more certainty about that than about Mom's birthplace. And, Grandmother was Ashrula Ray, and she was born in 1877, also in Butler County, Kentucky.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that R-H-E-A or R-A-Y?
MR. EILER: R-A-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: R-A-Y.
MR. EILER: R-A-Y.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Give me a little bit of what you know about your father's school history.
MR. EILER: I think he went to the 10th grade, and would that have been during the Depression? But yeah, I think he quit and went to work after the 10th grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seems to be the trend back in those days.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom?
MR. EILER: I really don't remember how much schooling she had. Maybe, the eighth grade. But I know, I remember her saying that at 14, she moved to Louisville and started working in a box factory in Louisville, 14-years-old. Of course, her father died young, and I really don't have any information on what happened, you know, how they got along from the time he died until she went to Louisville. She was probably with some of her siblings when she moved to Louisville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how your mother and father met?
MR. EILER: Do not know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. EILER: I've got three brothers and one sister.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And they're names are?
MR. EILER: Fred Eiler, lives here in Karns. Joyce, Joyce Whiteside lives in Farragut, and Ron, the youngest, lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Well, no he doesn't. He's residing in Louisville, Kentucky. At the time, he's a resident of Farragut.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that's just two brothers. You said three, you got one more head out there somewhere?
MR. EILER: Did I count wrong?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You told me you had three brothers and one sister. I've got one sister and two brothers, are you counting yourself as-
MR. EILER: I must be.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay. That's all right. You're a brother to them, aren't you?
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall their places of birth and dates by any chance?
MR. EILER: They all three were born in Oak Ridge, and Fred in 1945. Joyce, Joy as she goes by now, in 1948, and Ron in 1956.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you live before you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: Sylacauga, Alabama. We came to Oak Ridge, Don, when I was three-months-old. Dad came up here before I was born, or after I was born. I don’t know his company's service date. He hired in at for ORNL [Oak Ridge National Laboratory], at X-10, in July of 1943. I've been thinking to try to find out, see if I can find out what his company's service date was, but haven't took it upon myself. But Mom and I stayed in Sylacauga, and her sister-in-law, who I don't think was actually her sister-in-law yet then, came from Louisville to Sylacauga and stayed with her until we were able to, until they had a house ready for us here in Oak Ridge, and we moved to Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did your dad do when he came?
MR. EILER: He was a machinist at the Lab. He started an apprenticeship with L&N [Railroad] there in Louisville, and I don't know, he may have gone to work for the railroad right after he quit his high school studies.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall him telling you how he knew about work in Oak Ridge by any means?
MR. EILER: No, no, I don't.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what was the first house the family lived in?
MR. EILER: 151 North Alabama Road.
MR. HUNNICUTT: 151?
MR. EILER: Yeah, little G house. I can still remember that coal stove in the living room.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what the inside of the G house looked like.
MR. EILER: Well, we had the oak floors, which at that time were cold, but now, of course, they would be real first-class flooring. You could come in the front door, you were in the little living room, and there's kind of a little dinette area between that and the kitchen at the back right part of the house. Of course, the coal bin back behind the kitchen, and then on the left there was a little-bitty hall. If you went left again, you were in the front bedroom. If you went to the right a little bit, you were in the back bedroom, and if you went all the way back down that hall, you were in the little bathroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, this is a two bedroom house?
MR. EILER: Two bedrooms, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned the stove, and it was a coal-fired furnace?
MR. EILER: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't a furnace, it was a stove.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Now, some of those, the G and H houses, the H's were three bedrooms about the same size. They looked sort of like a cemesto, they were a cemesto.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm interested to know, some did not have a fireplace or a chimney that went up top, did this one?
MR. EILER: No. No, the G's did not have a fireplace. Just had the stove, and I guess, some kind of…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Flue.
MR. EILER: A flue arrangement that went out in front.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the utility room, was there any ... a couple, a one, two sinks, a true sink for washing, like made out of concrete that set up on a stand, do you recall?
MR. EILER: Don, I can't-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, some of the cemestos had them.
MR. EILER: I can't remember having one. We had the little kitchen there, and then there was just a little space there and then the coal bin. I don't believe it had a utility sink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a wall and a door that separated the coal bin from the small kitchen?
MR. EILER: No. No, I don't think-
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's just all open space.
MR. EILER: I think it was all open space. Of course, the back door was there between the kitchen and the coal bin, so to speak.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the coal came through the door in the back side of the house?
MR. EILER: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, sure did. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You're the first person I've interviewed that lived in an actual G house, so that's why I'm quizzing you so much.
MR. EILER: Is that right?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. They didn't build many of them.
MR. EILER: Sure not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And very few H's as well, and they were all out there in the area you were referring to. Alabama, in that area.
MR. EILER: Yeah, the East Village area, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work any when she first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: No. No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the first school and where was it that you attended?
MR. EILER: Glenwood, and kindergarten, and that had to have been what? Around 1950 or 1951. Well, shoot. I was born in '43, and that would have been '48, '49. But yeah, it was Glenwood, and the first grade was on the, or the kindergarten, was on the west end of the building. I can remember being scared to death when I first went in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far was the school from your house?
MR. EILER: Whew, it's a couple miles I guess. It's a pretty good little distance.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, did your mother take you to school the first day or do you remember?
MR. EILER: I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Why was you scared? Was it just the atmosphere?
MR. EILER: Just being away from the home, being away from her, and yeah, all those kids and the teachers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend the morning session or the evening session of kindergarten?
MR. EILER: I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There was so many kids in those days, they had two sessions.
MR. EILER: Two sessions, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. You remember your teacher's name?
MR. EILER: Lord, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about the other grades? How many grades did you attend at Glenwood?
MR. EILER: Well, I'm a little bit confused. I think I went into first grade there, but somewhere along the line I ended up at St. Mary's [Catholic School], and I'm sure that I was in St. Mary's in the second grade, but I don't know whether maybe at the middle winter break or something, we moved from Glenwood to St. Mary's. I don't know. I don't remember the transition.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you didn't have to live in any kind of school district to go to St. Mary's. That was a private school.
MR. EILER: Right, yeah. Private school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you could live anywhere in the city.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You think it's probably the second grade you attended St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: Yeah. I'm sure that the second grade, I was at St. Mary's.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you get to school, do you recall?
MR. EILER: The buses. We rode the buses. We rode up to Jackson Square, and I don't know, I'm kind of thinking we maybe transferred buses there, and then somehow got on to around Vermont Avenue, you know, or maybe down the Turnpike. I don't really remember, on over to St. Mary's.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember having to pay to ride the bus?
MR. EILER: Yeah. A dime, and we could get tickets too. I can remember, vaguely remember the tickets.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Bus tickets?
MR. EILER: Bus tickets, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know what bus to get on when you ... Obviously, in the morning, you probably went out on the side of the street and waited on the bus at a certain place.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I don't remember whether we walked down to Arkansas Avenue. Gosh, I remember the bus numbers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But that's how you knew what bus to get on, the number of the bus. Wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's the first you had to remember so you can get there and back home.
MR. EILER: Yeah. And then, well, later on when we moved ... We'll get to that, I guess, here in a minute, but yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about riding the buses? I'm sure there's a lot of kids on there, but-
MR. EILER: There were, but that's really about all I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When it came time for you to come home from school, and it got close to your house, how'd you know where to get off the bus, and how did the bus driver know where to let you off?
MR. EILER: It seems like we had the bell, the cord, and you would pull on the cord, and I guess, probably after a while, why the drivers pretty well knew who was going where.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It seemed to be that way. He'd know the kids and where they'd stop.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Well, another aspect of that we can talk about maybe a little later, the local transit service.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your second grade teacher at St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember any of your teachers at St. Mary's? How many years did you go through St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: I graduated eighth grade, yeah, graduated eighth grade. Sister Jane Dominic, and I don't know whether she was the principal-
MR. HUNNICUTT: She was.
MR. EILER: Was she? That's the only one I can remember. I can remember the faces of some of the others, but I don't remember any names, but Sister Jane would leave a lasting impression on you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A lot of those nun teachers, I understand it would.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you feel like you got a good education going through St. Mary's?
MR. EILER: Very good. Very good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Prepared you for high school or junior high, I guess it was.
MR. EILER: Well, there's where the next story starts.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MR. EILER: I went to Knoxville Catholic High School for the ninth and tenth grades, and I don't really know how I made that decision, but there again, we were riding the bus. We would, by that time, I'd walk from ... We had moved to Pennsylvania Avenue. I walked from there down to the Central Terminal, get on the local transit bus, ride it into Knoxville to Gay Street, and either get on the Knoxville bus there and ride it on out to Catholic High on Magnolia Avenue or I'd walk from Gay Street out to Magnolia Avenue.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That wasn't too far out through there.
MR. EILER: Again, couple miles probably, and but did that for two years. Got a ride some of the time. Howard Gerth, by that time, I had met Howard earlier, but he was going to UT [University of Tennessee], and he would give us a ride. Probably, he'd drop us off there at Downtown, and then we'd catch the Knoxville bus out to school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I would say that your parents decided that would be the best place for you to go to high school.
MR. EILER: Well, that could be too. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, do you feel like you got a good education through the school?
MR. EILER: Yeah, all the way. The two years at Catholic High, and then the two years at Oak Ridge High. Real good, real good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the house number on Pennsylvania Avenue?
MR. EILER: Well, we were actually 109 Packer Road, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of house was that?
MR. EILER: That was a C. We had three bedrooms there. We moved ... Mom was pregnant with Ron at the time, so we had ... How does this add up? One, two, three, four. Me, two brothers, and a sister, so we were going to have four kids there in that little G house, so that was getting pretty crowded, so we moved into the three bedrooms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me your sleeping arrangements in the G house? Who slept where?
MR. EILER: Fred and I were in the, I guess it was smaller, the back bedroom. And I guess, Joyce was in with Mom and Dad, and ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: And when you moved to the C house, how did the sleeping arrangement go there?
MR. EILER: Pretty much the same. Well, what ... Where did Ron end up? I think Joyce ended up in the little bedroom by herself, and Fred and I were in the middle-sized bedroom, and then Mom and Dad and, I guess, Joyce was, or Ron was back there, infant, you know, with them in the biggest back corner bedroom. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In the summertime, what did you do for fun and entertainment when you were going to elementary school days?
MR. EILER: Don, well, in two different worlds, the East Village, and then over there around Pine Valley and New York Avenue and Pennsylvania. But in East Village we had those greenbelts. We had the greenbelt that ran up behind North Alabama and Alhambra Road and back up through there, and then we had another greenbelt that ran off of that one across, if you will, California Avenue, and then ran on up towards Delaware. We would roam and play in those greenbelts from daylight to dark. And not just the summertime, we would play back in there year-round. Just roam and play, and vine swings, you know, the grape vines.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it was pretty wild country, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: To us, it was the Hundred Acre Woods. It was a big, big area. I look at a map now, or I haven't really tried to go up there and wander around, but it seems like the area is not nearly as big as I had imagined it was then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No.
MR. EILER: But, they came in there, I don't know, late ‘40’s and tore down those flattops and built the houses that are there now on Alhambra, and up in that area. Of course, we'd watch the construction work up there. There was what we called the Red Dirt Hill, there off of Alhambra, and I guess, it was actually a cedar barren, and we would play on that and get up there after it rained and that clay mud would be the biggest mess you ever saw. But ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there any boardwalks out in that area during that time?
MR. EILER: Well, we had the original boardwalks, yeah. Well, I can vaguely remember them coming around tearing up the boardwalks. What I really remember is the work crews. They had metal forms that they used. The curbs were concrete. The sidewalks were asphalt and, of course, the streets were asphalt, but we had those concrete curbs. They had metal forms that they would put in place and pour the curbs, and then, of course, let them cure and then take the forms up and keep moving on down the street there pouring those. But yeah, I remember those wooden boardwalks.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's a shame they took those things up, because everybody I ever talk to enjoyed them. They were shortcuts from one street to another, easy accessible.
MR. EILER: Well, they hadn't ... I don't know what you call them. The pass, yeah. There was one from North Alabama up to California Avenue, about three houses up from us. It ran up through there, a shortcut you might call it. But it was gravel, it wasn't a boardwalk as I remember it, it was a gravel. Then when we moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, there was another one. Packer Road looped around to Pacific, and where the two streets met, I guess there at the top of that loop, there was one of those shortcut-type things that went up towards Pine Valley Shopping Center. I forget what the name of that road is, West Newkirk maybe. But yeah, those were all over town, and they were real handy to get around on foot to different parts of town. Well, going back to what were talking about, going to Glenwood. We used two or three of those along the way from North Alabama over there to the Glenwood Elementary School. But yeah, those were nice. Some good thinking on the part of the engineers that laid out that town.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you ever kind of just sat back and look at how Oak Ridge is laid out and think about the difficulty they had building those houses on all that hilly terrain?
MR. EILER: Well, yeah. In the mud, and oh yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know, when you get from Tennessee Avenue and you start going up all of these northern streets, it's nothing but hills up through there.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All the way across the whole city spanned.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Sure does.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It just amazes me how they got equipment up through there to do all that.
MR. EILER: Yeah. But, they put them up and they stayed up too, you know it. Here we are, what, 75 years later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about Pine Valley Shopping Center, what do you remember about it?
MR. EILER: Oh, The Laughing Monkey, the toy shop, and Jane Bridges, Doris Matthews. I worked some. Jane had some model airplanes, and of course, being a model airplane enthusiast, why I ended up handling that part of the store for her. There was a grocery store there, a barber shop. Aw, shoot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Beauty shop?
MR. EILER: May have been before The Laughing Monkey.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, The Laughing-
MR. EILER: Well, then of course the drug store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Laughing Monkey was in where the Fire Department used to be. Each one of those stores had a fire ... One engine and three or four men.
MR. EILER: Well, I remember that from East Village. I don't remember it from-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, they had moved out and she moved in there.
MR. EILER: Yeah, I'm trying to remember the barber shop. Breeding. Breeding.
MR. HUNNICUTT: His son cuts hair now on East Division Road, at that barbershop.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah Jim. Yeah, the Arcade Barbershop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, it was Downtown, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: They left Pine Valley and opened up in Downtown there. The Arcade Barbershop. That was Jim's dad. I know, he cut my hair many a time. I can't remember too much about the drug store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The drug store, Mr. Bass was the pharmacist.
MR. EILER: I don't remember that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the City Market was the-
MR. EILER: City Market.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think it was City Market. I get that one and the one at Elm Grove mixed up, but anyway, it's-
MR. EILER: I bet that Elm Grove was the City Market.
MR. HUNNICUTT: City Market.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, I can't remember what the market was. I moved up there on Norwood Lane years and years later, but visited that shop and it was such a neat place to visit.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very busy.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very busy.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Those grocery stores had good meat. You could get meat, good meat in those little grocery stores.
MR. EILER: But-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever go to the Pine Valley playground during the summer, and-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I can tell tales there. The one I've got to relate. The model airplanes. You know, they had a ball field out there behind the school building, and they had some organized activities out of the gym, and I guess it was the Oak Ridge Recreation Department there but I never got involved with that, but we got into model airplanes. The most amazing thing of it was the control line models, of course, around, around, around, around, but those engines had no mufflers. The things were loud. Again, we would get out there with them as long as we could buy fuel for those engines. Why, we would fly those model airplanes from dawn to dark. Those people that lived up there on those streets above the Pine Valley playground, you know? They had to be the most tolerant people in the world. The noise that we generated with those things, and we did it from junior high on up through high school. Maybe like five years we were up there, but nobody ever complained.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of engine did they use?
MR. EILER: They were internal combustion, glow plug. They were small engines, but they were quite powerful. You know, we'd fly those airplanes 80, 90 miles an hour on those control lines, believe it or not. And, you know, they were just incredibly loud. I'm still into the model airplanes today, but of course we've got mufflers and all that, and even with the mufflers the things are loud. If I take the muffler off of one of them and run it for whatever reason, I realize how loud those things were. Incredible.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the fuel consistency made out of?
MR. EILER: Methanol alcohol and castor oil, and we would, at times, actually make the fuel, mix the fuel ourselves. We would buy a gallon of methanol alcohol. The drugstores would buy it for us, and of course they had castor oil, so we would try to get a degummed castor oil that was a better lubricant, but yeah. Or you know, high-cotton when we had a little bit of money and we could buy commercial fuel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were the planes made out of?
MR. EILER: They were the balsa wood and plywood. Yeah, with the either silk covering or what they call silkspan, which is actually a paper. Then we had paint. Dope they call it that we actually covered or painted the paper or the silk with to seal and make a smooth finish on the wings.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember using the paper across, gluing it on, and then wetting the paper, and then when it dried-
MR. EILER: It'd shrink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It'd shrink and make it real tight.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Even the dope, the Butyrate dope paint would also cause it to shrink.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That stuff was pretty potent wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, I can tell some tales of that too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I used to get headaches smelling that stuff.
MR. EILER: Not realizing what I was doing, you know, that we didn't have adequate ventilation too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were the control lines made out of?
MR. EILER: They were steel. They were braided steel cable. Very thin ... Well, we had some that were actually solid steel wire, and then the more flexible ones were with the stranded, stranded cable.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me how you go about flying a model airplane. Does it take two people to do it?
MR. EILER: Oh yeah. Yeah. We didn't have any throttles or anything. When we start the engine, why the engine was running full power and somebody was holding it. Well, even to start it, one person to hold the plane and one person flipping the prop to start the engine, and then typically it was the pilot that was doing the engine starting. Then when we got the engine started and got it adjusted, why he would run out to the center of the circle that we were going to fly around and signal the person holding the plane to let go of it, and away we go. Fly it until the fuel runs out and the engine quits and then land it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You know the little needle out on the side of the motor?
MR. EILER: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, that controlled how fast that motor would run, wouldn't it? The mixture of fuel going into it.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Of course there's only one way you'd go-
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's why [crosstalk]-
MR. EILER: As fast as it would go.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your props made out of wood or plastic?
MR. EILER: We used both. They came out with the nylon propellers, and really probably the wood were a better, more efficient propellers, but of course, the nylons were more tolerable of rough landings.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Crash landings.
MR. EILER: Yeah, they didn't break quite as often as the-
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about when you was trying to start one, you know, you would get it around there and you flip it and sometimes it would kick back on you-
MR. EILER: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And kind of work on your finger a little bit.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever use one of those covers that you put over your finger. It seems like I saw those.
MR. EILER: Gloves. Gloves.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Gloves.
MR. EILER: We used a heavy leather glove. And we would use a chicken stick too. Either a piece of nylon or something, instead of using a finger for it. But yeah, we learned real quick that those heavy leather gloves were a good thing. Some of the engines that we were using, too, were quite high-performance engines, powerful, and they were mean about getting the things started. They would kick back like you talk about. Oh, they would chew up a finger.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When I tell you about an old 49 engine, what's that mean?
MR. EILER: That's the little-bitty one. Yeah, the Bumblebee? Baby bee. Baby bee they called it, 049 engine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They were made by who?
MR. EILER: Thimble Drome. Thimble Drome. They were a lot of fun. They were very cantankerous, cantankerous, finicky. The fuel, our home-brew fuel, they wouldn't run very well with that at all. We had to have the good commercial fuel for them to run well, but they were still sensitive in dirt. Of course, we were flying up there in Pine Valley on that ball field, that dirt field, and we would have dirt everywhere. Well, and even if we flew in the grass, we would have grass debris or grass seeds or whatever. So it was a continuous effort to keep the engines clean and keep them running.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you overcome your dizziness?
MR. EILER: Got used to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, before you got used to it, did you crash the plane?
MR. EILER: We even practiced spinning around in circles to acclimate ourselves to it, and we didn't really have any trouble.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did it take you to be able to not be dizzy?
MR. EILER: It didn't take much, just a few flights really. Never was a problem.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how do you control a model airplane to fly?
MR. EILER: Well, the U control, the control lines would ... We had a handle about, oh, four inches long, a nice fit in the hand, and the two control line wires were attached to that handle. You would move the handle up and down or front and back, and the motion would be transferred through a mechanism to the elevator on the tail on the plane which would make the airplane go up and down.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was the tail affixed at a certain angle so it would make a circle or was it just straight back?
MR. EILER: No, no. It was straight. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you're talking ... The elevator's located on the back wing of the tail.
MR. EILER: Yeah, the horizontal wing at the back of the airplane.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, those cables inside the body of the plane, what were they made out of?
MR. EILER: They were typically, not real thick, but they were hard wire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Solid wire.
MR. EILER: Solid wire, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did that go to a bell crank and then-
MR. EILER: Bell crank, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And move the-
MR. EILER: Yep. The control lines go to the bell crank and then the bell crank pushes the push rod, the solid metal wire, which was attached to the elevator at the back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When the two lines came out of the wing of the plane, when you built that you had to make sure that probably the front one was for up and down and the back was ...
MR. EILER: Well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you worked up and down this way, or how did-
MR. EILER: Yeah, well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that the way it was hooked up?
MR. EILER: Yeah, it was. Now of course, when you finished flying for the day, you would have a reel, cardboard reel or whatever plastic, and you would wind the wires up. We typically flew 50 or 60 foot radius circles. Fifty foot long lines, the wires, so you had to wind them up to take care of them, store them. But when you came back out the next time to fly, you attached the lines, the control lines to the wing of the airplane, you connected them to the handle, and you made sure that you had the up end of that handle connected to the up end of the wire coming out of that airplane wing. If you didn't it was bad news.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Go down instead of up.
MR. EILER: Yep.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, how did the wires attach to the airplane connections?
MR. EILER: Then we had little specialized clips that were made for that purpose.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a pretty good tug on that arm with that plane flying around.
MR. EILER: Not bad, but yeah, you like to have a pretty good tug to make sure that the wing stays and the plane stays out there on the end of those lines. If the lines get slack, of course you have no control of the airplane.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a certain distance of the lines that you flew out or could you have flown at a smaller diameter of circle?
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What's the advantage of flying at a larger diameter versus a small one?
MR. EILER: You're not turning around as fast, but there were ... there were protocols, protocols for different sizes of engines, they're different for the size of airplanes. The little 049 airplanes that you mentioned, they're small of course, and we actually used thread lines for them, typically.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Like fishing line?
MR. EILER: Like fishing line. And, we typically flew about 25 foot radius, 25 foot line length with those smaller airplanes, but you didn't want the lines to get slack.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who was your flying partner?
MR. EILER: Tony Wylie. Tony was my next door neighbor on Packer Road, and oh, Randy Peters. Randy Peters lived down on the corner of Packer Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh, there were others I'm sure, but they come to mind right off. John Peed. John Peed. He lived on ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: East Newkirk now.
MR. EILER: East Newkirk, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, I know John.
MR. EILER: Yes, John and some of the Smiths flew a little bit with us too. I don't remember any first names. They lived on Newkirk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What other jobs did you have growing up in Oak Ridge?
MR. EILER: Paper routes. I had the Chattanooga Times, believe it or not, over around the North Alabama area, and then the Knoxville Journal there around Pennsylvania.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How many customers did you have, do you remember?
MR. EILER: Whew, I think about 100, 100. I actually had three routes with the Journal. I think I had about 60 on each of the residential routes, but I had the Oak Ridge Hospital, and I'd wander through there in the morning and try to pedal a few papers actually at the rooms, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about what you remember about how the hospital looked in those days.
MR. EILER: That was the new, that was the new-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Methodist Hospital.
MR. EILER: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you didn't deliver in the old hospital.
MR. EILER: No, no, no. It was the new one. Trying to remember if it was three floors, four floors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite smaller than it is today, yeah.
MR. EILER: Well, I'm not even that familiar with ... Well, yeah today with the wings that go out the south side towards the…
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember the entry was facing Tennessee Avenue.
MR. EILER: Tennessee Avenue, sure was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The back side.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had an open house one time. It seemed like to me it was in 1960 maybe or somewhere in there, whenever they first built the hospital. The public went through and toured the hospital.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Big at that time compared to the old one.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember the old one that much. I can remember a ward kind of built into the land, the hill there, I just don't remember much at all about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, they did have wards where they had four beds in there at one time, you know, in some of those. Because it wasn't very big, but ... How much was papers in those days?
MR. EILER: Shoot, I don't remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how much you'd make a week?
MR. EILER: No, but it financed my model airplanes. It financed my Ham radio. It was-
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you get into Ham radioing?
MR. EILER: I'm guessing about 1955, ‘56. Yeah, but I was interested in radio from day one. I'll declare. The crystal kit set, when we were still in North Alabama. Strung an antenna out through the backyard into one of the trees back there, and then I got a little one tube radio that I assembled, and Mom and Dad bought me a radio, and it was before we left North Alabama. Nice Zenith little radio, and you could operate it off of plugging into the wall or it had a set of batteries that it would operate off of it. Batteries weren't too practical, of course, running them down, they were expensive. But, I've still got that radio, believe it or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that a shortwave radio?
MR. EILER: No, it was just AM [amplitude modulated].
MR. HUNNICUTT: AM?
MR. EILER: AM, yeah. An AM radio, but ...
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get involved in Ham radio?
MR. EILER: Somehow found out. I'm sure it was the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club had license classes, and what was at the Red Cross building there on the Turnpike. I don't know how I found out about them, but took those classes. They, of course, taught you the code as well as the theory aspects of radio operation. I'm sure that's where I met Howard Gerth, and don't remember well. Randy Peters ended up getting a Ham radio, amateur radio license also. We were big in the amateur radio there while we were in high school, but a lot of fun.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What class of Ham radio did you achieve?
MR. EILER: Well, I got the novice to start with, that was the beginner, basic theory exam and five words per minute code proficiency, and that license was good for one year. Well, I ran into a bit of a pickle. To the next step up in the licenses was the general class license, 13 words per minute code and a bit more theory as far as examination was concerned, but you had to go to Knoxville to the old post office building there on Main Avenue to take the exam. The Federal Communications Commission only came to Knoxville every three months, once a quarter. Well, I got into a situation where my novice exam was about to expire and like about the same time, they came to Knoxville for the exam, so I had to pass the exam right then or else for the next three months I wasn't going to be licensed to go on the air, but passed, passed, and continued on. But then, when I got in college, I regret it to this day, but I let my license expire.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of radio did you have when you-
MR. EILER: Heathkit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay.
MR. EILER: Heathkit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a wire antenna strung out?
MR. EILER: Yeah. That was there on Packer Road. I built a pretty decent little mast out of 2x4s. I think I used 12 foot 2x4s, and I think I ended up with like close to a 24 foot mast. We didn't have any trees that were usable there in the yard there at that house, so I put that mast up at the back end of the yard there and then attached the other end of the antenna to the chimney, and talked to the world.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you know how long to make the wire for your antenna?
MR. EILER: Oh, you learn all that so that you can pass the exam-
MR. HUNNICUTT: For the theory?
MR. EILER: For your ... yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the wire was made out of?
MR. EILER: That particular antenna was what they called folded dipole. Back in the day, we had TV lead-in, which was a flat two conductor cable if you will, and the antenna was made out of that. Sixty-six feet long, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you had to attach the co-ax, the lead-in to the radio someplace in the length of that antenna didn't you?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Midpoint. This was a balanced antenna.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At each end of that antenna, it had to be insulated to something I guess within that-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So it wouldn't go to ground?
MR. EILER: Yeah, right. Using ceramic insulators, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that antenna was for a certain frequency, I presume, on the band.
MR. EILER: Yeah, 7 megahertz.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you weren't allowed to go to any other frequency other than that for your classification.
MR. EILER: Oh, well there were several different bands that you could operate at. You were more limited with the novice license then you were with the general license. But my situation, the receiver, I paid 29 dollars for the Heathkit receiver, and it worked best at 7 megahertz, 40 meters, so everything pointed for me to operate on 7 megahertz.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When I say it works CW, what does that mean?
MR. EILER: Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what does CW actually stand for, do you even know?
MR. EILER: Continuous wave. Yeah, yeah. You're actually emitting a continuous signal that is interrupted, of course, as you open and close the key, the telegraph key to send the Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you enjoy working CW?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. I much preferred CW. I managed to build a modulator. Again, I had a Heathkit transmitter, and I think I paid about 30 dollars, of course, its 1960 or 1955 actually, when 30 dollars was a pretty good chunk of change. But then I built a modulator, which allowed me to use phone communications, but I much preferred the CW, the Morse code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Are you still involved in HAM radio today?
MR. EILER: To a limited extent, yeah. Yeah. I've got an operating station.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What's it mean by “meeting the net”?
MR. EILER: Well, that's primarily what I do these days. For emergency ... Well, traffic handling. Back in the day I guess, amateur radio was used for conveying messages. Of course, now one purpose for amateur radio is emergency communications if and when there's problems, and they'll have networks that are really dry runs to provide emergency communications, and that's “meeting in the net.” Everybody is checking in and letting the net control station know that they're there and available to handle messages or whatever has to be done.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, it sounds like to me that Ham radios is kind of the forerunner of our telephones we have today, our wireless telephones. You had repeaters, I believe, back in those days that came online that would put the signal on down the country.
MR. EILER: Right. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about phone patches?
MR. EILER: Well, soldiers, military personnel overseas, and amateur radio stations typically, I guess, and many of the military bases overseas, they had amateur shortwave radio stations. The soldiers, sailors, whatever, airmen could communicate with amateur radio stations in the United States. The phone patches were an interface mechanism between the radio and the local telephone service, and the amateur radio operators could provide communications between the overseas soldiers and their families in the United States. Of course, if it was a local call on the telephone where the amateur radio station was located, it was essentially free communications for those soldiers, military personnel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a mobile unit in your vehicle?
MR. EILER: Yeah, but I didn't operate much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were they kind of limited to how much range you had?
MR. EILER: Yeah, the range is limited and considerable degree of difficulty getting a viable amateur station, mobile amateur station.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What is the term “skip” mean?
MR. EILER: Propagation. At the high frequencies, 10 megahertz, 20 megahertz, 30 megahertz, the radio waves can skip off of the ionosphere and that mechanism allows communications half way around the world, and skip is a good as, well, a catch-and catch-can activity. It depends on the solar activity. It depends on the time of day, and it depends on some things that I think we still don't understand to this day, in spite of the fact that radio communications have been going on for 100 years, but long-range communications by ionospheric skip.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did most of her grocery shopping?
MR. EILER: I do remember the A&P at Jackson Square. Well, yeah I guess, I really don't remember us doing much shopping at the grocery at East Village or the grocery at Pine Valley, but mostly at A&P there at Jackson Square.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, that was the number one grocery store, I guess, for a time.
MR. EILER: Yeah, well, were there any White Stores at that time?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The White Store came in after the A&P moved out in, you know, in '55 they moved down to the new Downtown area.
MR. EILER: Right, they were up there-
MR. HUNNICUTT: The White Store came in, in its place.
MR. EILER: Oh, okay. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: White Store was good. White Store was the forerunner of Food City.
MR. EILER: Well, how about that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. What else do you remember about Jackson Square?
MR. EILER: Well, football games. Blankenship Field. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about department stores in the square?
MR. EILER: Well, Loveman's. Loveman's, yeah. Yeah. They had the basement downstairs. The amateur astronomer, for my birthday, or excuse me, for graduation for eighth grade, the parents bought me a pair of 7x50 binoculars from Loveman's. I wanted just a rinky-dink, cheap, pair of binoculars, but they got me a real nice pair of binoculars. I was in seventh heaven looking at the heavens with those binoculars, and yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, are you still a stargazer today?
MR. EILER: Still a stargazer. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I still got those binoculars. They're worn out, but I still have got those binoculars.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, I think upstairs in Loveman's was clothes, wasn't it?
MR. EILER: Clothes, yes. That's what I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And perfumes and things of that nature.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Downstairs, was that mainly the sporting good area, and what all do you remember down there?
MR. EILER: Really, all I remember and I don't know if it was kind of a photography section or what, but that's really all that I remember downstairs.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe that they did have a place where you could have photos made. You came in that back door. You remember there was a back door that faced the back parking lot?
MR. EILER: Right, there was. Yeah, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about movie theaters? Did you go to the movies very much?
MR. EILER: Oh, yeah, yeah. The Central, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Center.
MR. EILER: Center Theater. That was there at Jackson Square, and Saturday the westerns and the Commando Cody or, anyway, there was some kind of space serial thing. Yeah. And, we loved to go to the Center Theater every Saturday.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what it costs to get in?
MR. EILER: Ah, there again it was maybe a quarter. I don't think it was much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you visit the Oak Ridge swimming pool very much?
MR. EILER: Not a whole lot. I went to Oak Ridge to take, to this pool to take swimming lessons, and we did go to the pool some, but I was not meant to be a swimmer.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the gate opening in March of '49?
MR. EILER: No, no I don't.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about in 1945 when they dropped the bomb? Do you remember anything about that?
MR. EILER: No, I would of course only been two years old. No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were out in the summer during your high school days, other than model airplaning and Ham radioing, what else did you do for fun or activities?
MR. EILER: Well, the touch football. We had our mud bowls at Pine Valley. We had a good crowd up there, and I don't remember us playing football that much in the summertime. Of course, it would have been hot, and of course, we were playing with the airplanes and what not, but in the fall and the winter, we would play football. Of course, it didn't matter how much it rained, how muddy that field was, we would play football.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Snow White Drive-In, do you remember that?
MR. EILER: Snow White was there in front of the hospital. Yeah, yeah. We would eat breakfast there, where were we going?
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were carrying newspapers, was that a central place to meet your route manager? Do you remember? If you needed him, that's where you'd go find him.
MR. EILER: Don't remember. Don't remember, yeah, but it seemed like they had a good breakfast there at the Snow White.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you live on Packer Road the whole time until you got married and-
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Your family lived there until-
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long did they live there?
MR. EILER: Well, they lived there on through ... I commuted mostly going to UT, and when Sandy and I got married, we got an E-1 apartment down on East Tennessee, right below the Elm Grove there, and-
MR. HUNNICUTT: You remember the number?
MR. EILER: 422, can't forget it, 422 East Tennessee. Then, we stayed there six months maybe and moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, 319 Pennsylvania Avenue. I can't remember the name of the guy that we rented that place from. That was probably an A house, a B house, I don't remember. But, anyway, ended up that we bought the C house, 109 Packer Road, from Dad, and we lived there for five years or so maybe, before we finally moved out here to Karns.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let's back up. You bought it from your dad, what happened to him? Why would he sell the house to you?
MR. EILER: They moved to a smaller house. They moved up to West Malta, yeah, and didn't need that big a house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you lived in the E-1 apartment, can you tell me what that looked like inside?
MR. EILER: One bedroom, you come in the front door, had the little living room dinette area, dining area there. Then that was on the front side, if you will, the kitchen was on the back side and one little bedroom on the back side. A bathroom was between the bathroom and the kitchen.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you say that E-1 apartment was located? It's on Tennessee Avenue there, East Tennessee, but past the Elm Grove Shopping Center.
MR. EILER: Yeah, if you're going east toward East Village from the Elm Grove Shopping Center, it would have been about the third E unit-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Complex downtown.
MR. EILER: Yeah, E complex on the right going down through there, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your wife?
MR. EILER: Probably at the Gerth residence. Karl and Howard Gerth's house, best I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And her name is Sandy?
MR. EILER: Sandy, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was her maiden name?
MR. EILER: Laughlin. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you all go for dating?
MR. EILER: Whew, I don't know. Here and there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Movies or various things of that nature?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what year did you all get married?
MR. EILER: 1967.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was the marriage held?
MR. EILER: Kern Methodist there in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, that's across from where you used to live in that E-1 apartment-
MR. EILER: Just down East Tennessee Avenue, a little ways. Yeah. We were right at the new home there after the wedding.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You can just walk across the street just about.
MR. EILER: Almost, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of any other things that we haven't talked about, I mean, there's so much that goes on in people's lives, but what's some the other things that might come to your mind that we haven't talked about, stories or people you've met that ... What about people that's been the influence on you in your life?
MR. EILER: Oh goodness, whew.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You better say your wife.
MR. EILER: Well, yeah, of course that. That goes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me ask you, what was your first job when you got married? Where did you work?
MR. EILER: Well, I graduated from UT in December of '66. Went to work at Y-12 in January of '67, and then we got married in September of '67.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job at Y-12?
MR. EILER: Engineer, process engineer with the utilities department.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, exactly what does a process engineer do? Don't talk about anything classified.
MR. EILER: Well, no as far as the utilities activities, I worked in the utilities department for 18 years, and there was not much classified activity there. But of course, we're providing the electricity, the water, the refrigeration, the industrial gases, the helium, nitrogen, and what not. So engineering support to keep the utilities systems operating.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife work at the time?
MR. EILER: No, she was ... No, she was at Knoxville Business College for a while at that time, and didn't do any productive activities.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you involved, or you individually or your wife, involved in any clubs of any sort?
MR. EILER: Well, back in the day, the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club, when we were in high school, and really I've been active in the Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club off and on over the years. I think the club is still active now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It is.
MR. EILER: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: By the way, what's your call letters?
MR. EILER: It was K4MDG, many dancing girls back in those days. And, I got relicensed in 1975 and got WA4PLD when I was relicensed then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That's somebody's old call letters from way back…
MR. EILER: It is, and it's kind of odd because at that time. that call sign was not in sequence. So, whether it was deliberate or some kind of fluke, I have no idea. But when they gave me that call sign, it wasn't in the sequence that it should have been. They were way into the WB4 call signs at that time, but no matter, it works.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Am I right in saying that if an individual has a call sign for many years and they die, they hold that for a while before they reissue it?
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. They do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how long that is?
MR. EILER: I believe it's two years. I believe it's two years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you could have someone that possibly 25 years old that have the call letters that somebody that was 95 had and passed away then.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, when they started, they call it vanity call signs, when they started allowing people to apply for specific call signs. I thought well I'll see about getting my call sign back, K4MDG. I fiddled around and didn't do it right then, and now somebody else has that call sign.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Cold War times, do you remember anything about that? Civil defense and things of that nature?
MR. EILER: Well, I remember the, I guess they weren't really fire drills, they were civil defense drills, they would get us out in there at St. Mary's. They would get us out in the hall and hunker down in the hallways. Yeah, I don't remember much else.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else we hadn't talked about you'd like to talk about?
MR. EILER: I'm talked out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I doubt that, you just think you are.
MR. EILER: Yeah, yeah, no.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How would you describe Oak Ridge? You've lived there for quite a few years and how would you describe it? You growing up there?
MR. EILER: Well, it was ... There were all kinds of things to do, fishing. Well, we had the Clinch River, and then when they impounded Melton Hill Lake, we had the lake. The greenbelts, you know, as far as hiking and prowling around. The athletic fields, the softball. That was something. The softball there in East Village. There were dormitories. North Alabama Road, South Alabama Road more or less with Arkansas Avenue formed a circle, and Glenwood Baptist Church started, I guess, in one of those dormitories, and then they built a church later on, but there's plenty of room out there for ... They may have even had a small playground with a slide and swings there in that area, but we had a softball field. There again, the kids, all the kids around the neighborhood there, we would play softball, just have a big time. Lay down a little diamond with bases and all that. We played softball till-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, it was a shopping center right there at, East Village Shopping Center.
MR. EILER: Right, right. Down at Arkansas.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of stores were in that shopping center?
MR. EILER: I remember, you talked about the fire station. I remember the fire station being underneath there. It was in the basement, so to speak, and I think we had a barber shop, and we had the grocery store, and that's about all I remember. There may have been some other commercials.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever see the Dalmatian fire dog called Chief? He would hang out at that-
MR. EILER: East Village?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Actually Chief died because when the fire alarm would come in that dog would jump onto the fire truck and go with them. Well, he was up at the store nosing around, I understand, trying to find a handout and he heard the alarm and he went out there, he got in the wrong place and the truck ran over him.
MR. EILER: Oh my goodness.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. EILER: Yeah, but I believe I do remember him now that you mention it. Yeah. We would hang out a little bit there around the fire hall. The guys in there were nice to us.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I understand he would travel up to Elm Grove, and then he'd travel on up to Jackson Square up to that fire station looking for handouts.
MR. EILER: Well-
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, quite a story. Well, you're involved in bowling today aren't you?
MR. EILER: Bowling yeah. Bowling. We bowl, Randy Peters and I got into bowling back when we were in high school, and we bowled mostly at Jefferson. That was something else, you mentioned the theaters and the bowling alleys. We bowled at Jefferson, and I can remember the manual pin setters and the pin boys back there racking the pins and enjoyed that a whole lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Remember the name of the bowling center or bowling alley in those days?
MR. EILER: Yes, well I guess it was just Jefferson.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Paragon.
MR. EILER: Paragon. You're right. You're right. It was. Yeah, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about skating rink? Did you visit the skating rink much?
MR. EILER: I can't skate. We would go there, of course, the Wildcat Den. We would go there. I can't dance either, but I tried once or twice to try and roller skate. I can ice skate a little bit, but I cannot roller skate.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Speaking of The Wildcat Den, there was an individual that kind of overran that, do you remember what his name was?
MR. EILER: Oh Shep, Shep Lauter.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of man was he?
MR. EILER: He was a prince. The nicest fella you could ever want to meet.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. EILER: He was, but at the same time, he would not let the kids there at the Den get rowdy. When he had to pull on the reins and calm things down, he could do it. He could control the situation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He had the respect from the kids?
MR. EILER: Oh he did, yeah, absolutely. Thought the world of him. Yeah. I don't know, it seems like we may have even had some bands. Can't remember the name of any of them, but that was fun. Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Anything else come to mind?
MR. EILER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I'm sure after we get through you'll think of something.
MR. EILER: Think about, yeah, a 100 different things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I want to thank you for your time today, Don.
MR. EILER: Well, my pleasure for sure.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I appreciate letting us coming into your home and interviewing you. Thank you again.
MR. EILER: You're welcome.
[End of Interview]